A new production of Jörg Widmann's wide-ranging opera Babylon premiered in May at the Hessisches Staatstheater, Wiesbaden, Germany, directed and staged by Daniela Kerck. The production is set in a vast airport lounge with a cast of around 150, and explores sweeping themes of love, religion, and culture. Creating the emotional canvas are projections from London-based video designer, Astrid Steiner.
Here, Steiner describes her approach to this project.
"For the setup on stage we used two projectors (front & rear) and multiple screens placed in front and behind the singers to alternate between scenic backdrop visuals and between holographic projections that superimpose videos in front of the singers on stage. The visuals were present from beginning to finish and alternated between front, rear or simultaneous projections. In conjunction with the lighting design, the front screen could disappear completely to provide full focus on the live action or at times the videos would re-appear on the front screen and interact with the performance.
The videos consisted of 3D animations created in Blender and also filmed sequences of the singers/actors and other cinematic footage. For editing and compositing we used Adobe Premiere & After Effects. For the live playback we used QLab4 running on a MacPro as that was already available in the house. In total, we split the show up into approximately 100 single clips that could be programmed and cued live according to the music and activity on stage.
The setup of the projections and the video content created an immersive experience, something that also speaks to a younger audience and helps to attract more people to modern music theatre.
We believe that opera needs to explore new paths to lift its art and its stories into the present day - from scrutinizing role stereotypes to using new immersive tools such as visuals. Video per se is not reinventing the staging of operas, but used in a multi-faceted way such as for Babylon it is a mesmerizing ingredient to deepen the audience's experience."
Projection Gear
- Rear Projection: Panasonic PT-RQ32K
- Front Projection: Panasonic PT-DZ21
- Playback QLab v04 on MacPro
Crew List
- Director & Stage Designer Daniela Kerck
- Video Designer Astrid Steiner
- Conductor Albert Horne
- Lighting Designer Klaus Krauspenhaar
- Video Playback Gérard Naziri
- Costume Designer Andrea Schmidt-Futterer
- Choreography Sommer Ulrickson
- Chorus Master Albert Horne
- Dramaturgy Anika Bárdos, Wolfgang Behrens